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This study explores the factors influencing knowledge hiding (KH) in international construction projects (ICPs), focussing on the role of ethnic minorities (EMs) and interpersonal distrust (ID). It also aims to understand how these factors influence KH and explore the mediating effect of ID on the relationship between EMs and KH.

A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to professionals participating in ICPs. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse 294 valid responses, examining the effect of EMs, ID and demographic variables on KH behaviours. Our approach integrates insights from social identity theory (SIT) and actor network theory (ANT) to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the observed dynamics.

The findings reveal that EMs significantly influence KH behaviours, with ID partially mediating this relationship. Additionally, demographic variables such as gender and age also play significant roles in KH behaviours. However, the degree of education did not show a significant impact on KH. Our results emphasise the critical importance of addressing ID and fostering inclusive environments to reduce KH.

While our study sheds light on the complex dynamics of KH in ICPs, further research could explore additional contextual factors and organisational influences. While our study emphasises the importance of inclusive practices and trust-building to mitigate KH, it also recognises the need for a deeper understanding of power dynamics and organisational contexts.

Our findings underscore the importance of creating transparent and inclusive cultures of knowledge sharing (KS). Implementing inclusion initiatives and providing cultural awareness training can enhance project outcomes and organisational success. We also propose a practical framework to mitigate KH by promoting trust, inclusivity and effective KS practices.

This study contributes to the understanding of knowledge management in multicultural project teams by integrating SIT and ANT, offering a comprehensive perspective on the factors driving KH in ICPs. The findings pave the way for future investigations into power dynamics and organisational contexts within ICPs.

This study aims to enhance integration of game-based learning (GBL) as a tool for conveying intricate circular economy (CE) concepts effectively into international and interdisciplinary higher education collaborations for the development of sustainable communities.

A series of game-based workshops by the Circular EELISA Community of the EELISA European University program were examined in terms of their compliance with literature-based GBL characteristics and their international, interdisciplinary and online conduct. An online survey conducted with 17 workshop and/or challenge organizers from four participating universities in different countries revealed expert experiences and perceptions on these points.

It was found that sensory elements, rewards and game choice enhanced engagement and motivation in all gamification, serious game and storytelling experiences, and that a combination of multiple GBL approaches was more effective than a single-method challenge design. Diversity-friendly collaboration, cooperation and immersion were particularly important when involving culturally and disciplinarily diverse participants.

This study offers practical recommendations to improve both the performance of GBL-based learning environments in current and future education alliances and collaborations and the potential of GBL approaches to motivate youth to contribute to more sustainable communities across and beyond Europe.

The findings underscore the value of innovative pedagogical methods in shaping environmentally conscious mindsets and practices across institutions of higher education. To that end, this is the first study that investigates GBL in CE education with implications for international university cooperation.

This study explores the relationship between economic freedom and gender ideologies on the allocation of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries. Opportunity entrepreneurship is typically understood as one’s best option for work, whereas necessity entrepreneurship describes the choice as driven by no better option for work. Specifically, we examine how economic freedom (i.e. each country’s policies that facilitate voluntary exchange) and gender ideologies (i.e. each country’s propensity for gendered separate spheres) affect the distribution of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries.

We construct our sample by matching data from the following country-level sources: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey (APS), the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), the European/World Value Survey’s Integrated Values Survey (IVS) gender equality index, and other covariates from the IVS, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) World Bank (WB) databases. Our final sample consists of 729 observations from 109 countries between 2006 and 2018. Entrepreneurial activity motivations are measured by the ratio of the percentage of women’s opportunity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship to the percentage of female necessity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship at the country level. Due to a first-order autoregressive process and heteroskedastic cross-sectional dependence in our panel, we estimate a fixed-effect regression with robust standard errors clustered by country.

After controlling for multiple macro-level factors, we find two interesting findings. First, economic freedom positively affects the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship. We find that the size of government, sound money, and business and credit regulations play the most important role in shaping the distribution of contextual motivations over time and between countries. However, this effect appears to benefit efficiency and innovation economies more than factor economies in our sub-sample analysis. Second, gender ideologies of political equality positively affect the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship, and this effect is most pronounced for efficiency economies.

This study offers one critical contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how economic freedom and gender ideologies shape the distribution of contextual motivation for women’s entrepreneurship cross-culturally. We answer calls to better understand the variation within women’s entrepreneurship instead of comparing women’s and men’s entrepreneurial activity. As a result, our study sheds light on how structural aspects of societies shape the allocation of women’s entrepreneurial motivations through their institutional arrangements.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a three-echelon multimodal transportation problem applied to a humanitarian logistic case study that occurred in Mexico.

This study develops a methodology combining a transshipment problem and an adaptation of the multidepot heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem to construct a mathematical model that incorporates the use of land-based vehicles and drones. The model was applied to the case study of the Earthquake on September 19, 2017, in Mexico, using the Gurobi optimization solver.

The results ratified the relevance of the study, showing an inverse relationship between transportation costs and delivery time; on the flip side, the model performed in a shorter CPU time with medium and small instances than with large instances.

While the size of the instances limits the use of the model for big-scale problems, this approach manages to provide a good representation of a transportation network during a natural disaster using drones in the last-mile deliveries.

The present study contributes to a model that combines a vehicle routing problem with transshipment, multiple depots and a heterogeneous fleet including land-based vehicles and drones. There are multiple models present in the literature for these types of problems that incorporate the use of these transportation modes; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are still no proposals similar to this study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine US public relations professionals' perceptions of the benefits and challenges associated with the concept of moral entrepreneurship, defined as the purposeful process of changing or creating new institutionalized ethical norms. This study argues that the concept of moral entrepreneurship provides organizations with a potentially valuable framework to actively recognize societal pressures and problems and act accordingly to better the environment in which the organization resides and operates.

This exploratory study uses purposive in-depth interviews with 25 diverse public relations professionals, who represented communication firms, in-house public relations departments, higher education, nonprofits and government.

Respondents assigned a high value to the concept of moral entrepreneurship: In addition to its being viewed as the right thing to do, they recognized its practice as a way to help organizations recruit and retain employee talent and improve stakeholder trust. However, based on the interviews, organizational leadership is the primary initiator of ethical changes; therefore, without a seat at the management table, practitioners lack the influence to initiate such new organizational directions and take on the role of moral entrepreneurs only when directed to do so by their superiors. Barriers to adopting a moral entrepreneurship approach included a limited budget and shortage of staff, employees' resistance to change, fear of failure, poor leadership and a politically polarized workplace.

Practice implications include considerations for furthering moral entrepreneurship in organizations.

This study is the first to explore the applicability of the concept of moral entrepreneurship in public relations. The paper underscores the need for further discussion around novel approaches to ethics in public relations that go beyond simple compliance with professional codes and industry standards and that help organizations lead societal change.

Chewy, Inc. is a direct-to-consumer seller of pet food and supplies. Their approach involves a deep understanding of pet owners’ needs and behaviors to provide personalized product recommendations and exceptional customer service. This case study aims to describe Chewy’s growth strategies and how the company can remain a market leader.

Using the customer value assessment tool, the authors examine Chewy’s value proposition, including service, quality, image and price strategies.

Chewy has built a loyal customer base that values the company’s commitment to their pets’ health and well-being. Future opportunities include focusing on pet wellness products and services, collaborating with veterinary providers in telemedicine and international expansion.

This work is largely conceptual and presents a descriptive case study which reviews Chewy’s marketing strategy based on industry research as well as a customer value assessment via the service-quality-image-price framework.

Corporate leaders must adapt to market change and create business strategies to deliver superior value for customers. This requires innovative products, services and processes. The strategic insights are applicable to retailers, service and technology firms and entrepreneurial companies seeking to scale their businesses.

Chewy’s highly competitive market includes Amazon, e-commerce pet supply companies and big-box pet stores. But it has dominated the online sector and has substantial growth prospects. This paper concludes with recommendations for management and questions for consideration.

This work aims to analyze the factors that influence the performance and efficiency of Portuguese companies, namely the influence of social and environmental features.

To achieve our aim, we have used the Portuguese benchmark index, the Portuguese stock index – PSI, during the period from 2016 to 2020. To test the hypothesis panel data methodology was used, specifically, the GMM system originally proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and the Value-Based DEA developed by Gouveia et al. (2008).

The results of the GMM model show that social performance has a negative relationship with the company’s performance, from the perspective of different stakeholders, reinforcing that the cost-benefit trade-off of social spending is not yet understood as advantageous for the company’s performance. On the other hand, environmental performance, for external stakeholders, positively influences the company’s performance, perhaps due to pressure from society and the tradition of disclosing environmental matters. The value-based DEA results reinforce that from the perspective of the external stakeholder, non-efficient companies must increase their environmental performance to become efficient, highlighting the role of environmental performance in explaining efficiency. It is unanimous that social performance is still not seen as a lever of efficiency.

This is the first work to use a hybrid methodology to understand the performance determinants of a small banking-oriented country, emphasizing environmental and social aspects.

This paper aims to discuss current work and further steps of the psychological hotline launched by the National Psychological Association of Ukraine (NPA), along with a call for action to mental health professionals worldwide.

This paper describes the training and support of the NPA’s hotline staff as well as reflections on the hotline’s work from June 2022 to April 2023.

With broad international support, the NPA’s psychological hotline currently operates in 21 countries providing psychological assistance and referrals to other service providers within Ukraine and abroad. The authors propose further steps of its work, including international collaboration.

Providing citizens of Ukraine with broad public access to evidence-based remote psychological support through NPA’s hotlines is a high priority considering the war’s negative impact on mental health diverse and the limited capacity of the state mental health system.

The objective of this comparative quantitative study is to examine hypotheses regarding the impact of asset management and intellectual capital (IC) on the financial performance of the construction sector in the ASEAN-5 throughout 2019–2022 with enterprise resource planning (ERP) as a mediator variable.

A final sample of 65 construction industries listed on stock exchanges during 2019 and 2022 in ASEAN-5 (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore) was selected using the purposive sampling method. This research employs market-to-book value (MBV) as a measure of IC. The study also used path analysis, the Sobel test and analysis of variance test (ANOVA).

The findings demonstrate that asset management, intellectual capital and ERP have a significant and favorable impact on return on asset (ROA). Additionally, the asset management and IC of the ERP display weak and substantial outcomes. The implementation of ERP was also shown not to operate as a mediating factor. The ANOVA results on financial performance indicate significant differences for the year 2019. Furthermore, the use of various ERP software types demonstrates a comparable impact on enhancing financial performance.

This is the first study that utilizes ERP to mediate management asset and IC on financial performance. The ASEAN-5 construction sector is representative of developing nations' economic condition, offering the possibility to avoid the global economic collapse in 2023 and recover despite economic volatility.

This study aims to explore the phenomenon of “Quiet Quitting” from the perspective of employers in the Dominican Republic, particularly in the context of changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

From a qualitative approach, based on methods of Grounded Theory, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers from various sectors. The data were analysed using open, axial and selective coding techniques to identify emerging themes.

The study identifies four main scenarios contributing to quiet quitting: Social Disconnection, Stress and Anxiety, Re-evaluation of Priorities and Changes in Job Expectations. These factors indicate a significant shift in the employee–employer relationship post-pandemic.

The exploratory nature of this study limits its generalizability.

Organizations can mitigate quiet quitting by implementing flexible work policies, promoting work-life balance and enhancing communication between supervisors and employees.

Addressing quiet quitting can lead to improved employee well-being, higher productivity and a more positive work environment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to examine quiet quitting in the Dominican Republic from the employers’ perspective, providing unique insights into this understudied phenomenon in the region.

Este estudio explora el fenómeno de la “Renuncia Silenciosa” desde la perspectiva de los empleadores en la República Dominicana, particularmente en el contexto de los cambios provocados por la pandemia de COVID-19.

Desde un enfoque cualitativo, basado en métodos de la Teoría Fundamentada, se realizaron entrevistas en profundidad con gerentes de varios sectores. Los datos se analizaron utilizando técnicas de codificación abierta, axial y selectiva para identificar temas emergentes.

El estudio identifica cuatro escenarios principales que contribuyen a la renuncia silenciosa: Desconexión Social, Estrés y Ansiedad, Reevaluación de Prioridades y Cambios en las Expectativas Laborales. Estos factores indican un cambio significativo en la relación empleado-empleador postpandemia.

Las organizaciones pueden mitigar la renuncia silenciosa implementando políticas de trabajo flexible, promoviendo el equilibrio entre vida laboral y personal, y mejorando la comunicación entre supervisores y empleados.

Abordar la renuncia silenciosa puede llevar a un mayor bienestar de los empleados, mayor productividad y un entorno laboral más positivo.

Esta investigación es la primera en examinar la renuncia silenciosa en la República Dominicana desde la perspectiva de los empleadores, proporcionando perspectivas únicas sobre este fenómeno poco estudiado en la región.

Este estudo explora o fenômeno da “Abandono Silencioso” a partir da perspectiva dos empregadores na República Dominicana, particularmente no contexto das mudanças provocadas pela pandemia de COVID-19.

A partir de uma abordagem qualitativa, baseada nos métodos da Teoria Fundamentada, foram realizadas entrevistas aprofundadas com gerentes de vários setores. Os dados foram analisados usando técnicas de codificação aberta, axial e seletiva para identificar temas emergentes.

O estudo identifica quatro cenários principais que contribuem para a demissão silenciosa: Desconexão Social, Estresse e Ansiedade, Reavaliação de Prioridades e Mudanças nas Expectativas de Trabalho. Esses fatores indicam uma mudança significativa na relação empregado-empregador após a pandemia.

As organizações podem mitigar a demissão silenciosa implementando políticas de trabalho flexíveis, promovendo o equilíbrio entre vida pessoal e profissional e melhorando a comunicação entre supervisores e funcionários.

Abordar a demissão silenciosa pode levar a um maior bem-estar dos funcionários, maior produtividade e um ambiente de trabalho mais positivo.

Esta pesquisa é a primeira a examinar a demissão silenciosa na República Dominicana a partir da perspectiva dos empregadores, fornecendo insights únicos sobre esse fenômeno pouco estudado na região.